Marco,...Gardens for a front entrance or public area can be challenging to develop. One of the most challenging for clients is to understand that the space is 'not about themselves', as in, 'it is not about me'. A public garden is installed as a translatable device that informs the pubic of who the inhabitant is, and how they, the owner, would like to be approached and thought of in the neighbourhood. As a result the public garden is installed for the community.

The garden choices and installation methods and messages show that you wish to be recognised as 'different' from other people as no other gardens on that strip show similar traits. Nor, have you incorporated their messages into your space.

This then states, "Hi. I'm different from you, come visit at your own peril".

This makes me curious to personally understand why you would not 'apply any rules'.

(rules: Gardens are like a 'growing up' of a dialogue or children. When we take children out in public to a restaurant for example, we expect that they have some 'rules' they follow, such as "don't throw your food", " Don't throw your knife or spit out your food ", and later, "sit up straight" and much later, "Use the cutlery on the outside first..." along with "don't yell" and "did you say thank you to the nice person?")

we apply 'rules' as an exchange (dialogue) for social acceptance, even as you 'hope we feel proud' of your accomplishment, as you do.

as a result, along with my first question, I wish to understand the choices that you made and what your 'dialogue' is and what the expected peoples reacted dialogue should be ? (ie: (you are weeding your garden and a person walks up..) you say, " Hi, I'm Marc " and they say, "_______________" ? my response is, "Hi I'm edzard, what are you trying to tell me about yourself with your garden?")

btw, it __really_ saddens me that there is not an included photo. Without this included photo and only the link to photos, it indicates to me there is no wish for any dialogue or return of investment to assist with other peoples gardens that may be similar to yours,.... basically, really only a wish to drive people to your photo site. In other words, you would like peoples input, but don't feel like playing by the rules of providing people with an immediate visual and a free choice to see more if they so choose. -- you are forcing an interaction... was that the intent? edzard

Wow thank you for schooling me and I respect your opinion based on experience and I could not agree with you any more, but look at this way, a surgeon has a protocol they need to follow, they go to school, after school they still spend years mastering surgeries. I would expect that from someone who is knowledgeable to follow protocol (or rules as you are curiously trying to understand why I did it), I am not a doctor or an expert in Japanese gardens. And I can tell you from everyone that has seen my garden no one has asked questions about the rules I followed or even know what is a Japanese garden at all. Like me they don't give a hoot, just as long I am happy and content

Also you brought up something important about not loading pictures directing to the website, please tell the person who administers this website that they need to increase the size limit to be able to load pictures, I can't even load a picture taken with a cell phone because it exceeds the file size.

Again I appreciate your sincerity and most importantly your expertise, and I truly wished I could dedicated 100% of time learning and building Japanese gardens, but at this time it's my hobby.

... (shrug) Caferacer -- with regard to the picture size as attachments, please contact Don, the President and Admin.. better yet, offer a donation of 500 gigs or 1T of space when you contact him. Then we might be able to offer a larger attachment size...

I asked about the thought behind your garden as a common courtesy and practical means of understanding what you were trying to communicate, as to be a Japanese garden, the space needs to communicate something. If there is no thought/process or communication involved, then it is not a Japanese garden.

With respect to this, I offered simple examples of rules so that you might see that your garden would be a Japanese garden if it followed a simple common everyday logical rule: that of gravity.

Your pagoda is in a river, and your junipers are in a turbulent water vortex.

Having read this in your space, I hope that you can understand why I would ask why you did this -- as not applying this 'simple universal rule of gravity' does not make sense in the everyday world... everyone else seems to already know that stone sinks in water.

where I was going with this question was that you would have a unique and intriguing -Japanese garden- if you moved a pagoda, changed the gravel pattern and redid the 'vortex'...

:. as time progresses, maintenance becomes onerous, that pagoda gets in the way every time you rake, and you lose some of your contentedness, perhaps begin to give a hoot, may I suggest that you ask about gravel patterns and options for your design, as, another common rule is that gardens are continuously refined.

I have increased the size of allowed photo twice before - now is 600 x 600 and 256K each. I have also increased the attachment database to 4 times its original size due to outgrowing the space. Last i checked we had more than 12000 posts. Not that that is a bad thing! Anyway, sorry that there is a limit but our resources do have limits.

JGO takes a lot of work and time. We survive solely from donations - and we dont get much of that either - a few hundred a year and most of that is out of our own pockets. While we very much welcome requests and suggestions, please have patience and understand that we are doing what we can to help further Japanese Gardening.

Also, in the case where someone wishes to share lots of pics of a garden visit or special project, we do provide gallery space as well.

Hope this helps explain why we have limits and i hope you continue to enjoy and learn from the forum.

Marco you should be proud, your garden tells me you like unusually shaped plants and you do not want to cut the grass!!!

Smile, you are happy and you did it your way. Keep learning though, because as your interest in Japanese Gardening grows you will find the small changes you make in your garden will only enhance the love of your space.